Commentaria in III Regum
27. IF THIS PEOPLE GO UP TO OFFER SACRIFICES IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD AT JERUSALEM.—Jeroboam feared lest the people, going to Jerusalem to the temple, should likewise return to king Roboam reigning in Jerusalem, and say: We wish to adhere to Jerusalem and the temple: therefore also to its king Roboam: hence he commanded that none should go to Jerusalem and the temple, but that all should sacrifice at Dan and Bethel to the calves set up by himself. This counsel of his seemed politically prudent, and salutary for guarding his kingdom and political state: but in truth it was imprudent and ruinous, and utterly shook and overturned his state and kingdom. For God, “in whose hand are the rights of all kingdoms,” had threatened him with this, and so it befell: for because Jeroboam, to guard his kingdom, made a schism likewise in religion and faith, therefore all his “house” and family was “destroyed from the face of the earth,” as is said in chapter 13. For he reigned only 22 years with many sorrows and troubles. His son Nadab succeeded him, who scarcely reigned two years, and was deprived of kingdom and life by his servant Baasa, who soon so extinguished the whole family of Jeroboam that not one of it survived, as God had already before threatened him by the prophet Ahias: all which is plain in 3 Kings, chapter 15, verse 25 and following. He was therefore foolish as well as impious, in not believing God promising stability of the kingdom in his posterity, if he served him alone. For suppose his people had gone to Jerusalem to adore God in the temple, yet God would have made the people subject to him and obedient, and would have hindered it from returning to Roboam: for this he had expressly promised him, and had a thousand ways of performing it in mind and hand. Such nearly are the counsels of politicians and Machiavellians (of whom this Jeroboam is a very clear example) who make religion serve politics, and embrace such faith and religion as they think fitter for obtaining, or retaining, or increasing a kingdom, and other aims set before them. For although their counsels at the beginning seem specious and useful, yet in the course of time they generally involve princes in the greatest difficulties and bring them ruin, divine Providence so disposing, which rules all the counsels of men. Let them hear Nazianzen in praise of St. Athanasius, oration 21: “The Emperor Constantius,” he says, “grieved at his death for three things; first, that he had put his relatives to death; second, that he had named Julian the Apostate emperor; third, that he had zealously promoted new dogmas of faith, and with these words he departed from life. For a prince, by strengthening religion, is himself strengthened by it.” The Donatists followed Jeroboam in schism, he says, “ordained bishop against bishop, set up altar against altar,” and that “in the city of Carthage, the head of Africa,” as Jeroboam set up altar against altar. Finally that true religion, the worship of God and piety are the foundation of the kingdom and commonwealth, teach St. Augustine, book 1 City of God and following, St. Ambrose, nay even the Philosophers. Hear Plato, book 4 On the Laws: “Before all things let us invoke God, to establish our city, and let us beseech him to hear us, and be propitious and kind to us, and come to us and himself teach us the laws, and adorn our city.” And Mercury Trismegistus in Rhodiginus, book 9, chapter 19: “The measure of man before all things is religion, which goodness follows: this at length seems to be perfect, if, fortified by virtue, it holds the desire of all things not its own in contempt. Every one is distinguished by piety, religion, prudence, worship and veneration of God, as with eyes truly seen by reason and by the confidence of his belief; so far excellent among men as the sun is recognised to excel the other stars in the majesty of its light.” It is the Pythagorean maxim that by approaching God each one is made best. Xenophon, book 8 of the Cyropaedia, makes Cambyses speak thus to his son Cyrus going to Astyages his grandfather: “This one thing I especially commend, and desire that, as a precious treasure given by a father, it be perpetually stored in thy memory: be a friend of God, pious toward him, and undertake nothing without imploring the divine will, for the nature of mortals is weak and dull, nothing is hidden from the wisdom of God; all things turn out to their mind for those to whom it is at hand.” This paternal admonition sank so deep into the son’s mind that Xenophon, not without admiration, impresses on his readers everywhere with what piety Cyrus worshipped the gods, and with what zeal and diligence he gave his effort to appease them with vows, prayers and sacrifices. Cicero, oration On the Answer of the Soothsayers: “However much we may love ourselves, Conscript Fathers, yet we have surpassed neither the Spaniards in number, nor the Gauls in strength, nor the Carthaginians in cunning, nor the Greeks in arts, nor finally the Italians and Latins themselves in the domestic and native sense of this very nation and land, but in piety and religion and in this wisdom, that we have perceived that all things are ruled and governed by the divinity of the immortal gods, we have surpassed all peoples and nations.” Valerius Maximus, book 1, chapter 1: “Our city,” he says, “has always held that all things are to be put after religion, even those in which it wished the glory of the highest majesty to be seen; wherefore they did not hesitate to make their empires serve the sacred rites: thinking that they would have the government of human affairs if they had served the divine power well and constantly.” And in the same place: “No wonder, therefore, if for the increasing and guarding of its empire the persistent indulgence of the gods has always kept watch, because with so scrupulous care it seems to examine even the smallest moments of religion, for our city must be thought never to have had its eyes turned away from the most exact worship of ceremonies.”
Moreover all precepts to be given to kings are comprised in these two: Remember that thou art a man: remember that God is judge and avenger. The former pertains to curbing their power, the latter to the will.
28. HE MADE TWO GOLDEN CALVES.—Jeroboam made calves rather than rams or horses, because the fathers of the Jews had melted and adored a golden calf in the desert, and that in imitation of Apis, which they had worshipped in the form of a calf or ox in Egypt, Exodus 32:4. See what is said there. Whence Osee and the other Prophets thunder against these calves. Hence Jeroboam uses here the same words which his forefathers had used, Exodus 32, saying: “Behold thy gods, O Israel, who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” Of these I said much on Osee and the Prophets. Again, Jeroboam, fleeing from Solomon, went into Egypt to king Sesac, and there saw Apis worshipped in the form of a calf (and perhaps himself worshipped him to win the favour of Sesac): whence on the death of Solomon, returning into Judea, and making a schism from Juda and Jerusalem, he set up golden calves which he had seen worshipped in Egypt, that relying on the help of the Egyptians he might resist Roboam and the Jews.
29. AND HE SET ONE IN BETHEL, AND THE OTHER IN DAN,—as at the two boundaries of his kingdom: for Bethel was the boundary of Israel to the South; Dan to the North. Again, Bethel was a famous and sacred place on account of the vision of God shown on the ladder to Jacob the patriarch, Genesis 28, and thence was called “Bethel,” that is, “House of God”; but Jeroboam out of Bethel, that is, “House of God,” made Bethaven, that is, “house of iniquity,” and of the idol, as Osee says. Bethel is now placed in the tribe of Benjamin, now in the tribe of Ephraim, whence many think that there were two Bethels, and that here is meant the one which is in Ephraim: for of this Jeroboam was king. Others, however, with Adrichomius, think that it was one and the same Bethel, which is now assigned to Benjamin, now to Ephraim, because it was situated on the border of both tribes, or because this one of the Benjamite towns adhered to Jeroboam and permitted this idol of the calf to be placed with it.
30. AND THIS THING BECAME AN OCCASION OF SIN (that is, this matter; of these calves of Jeroboam all Israel fell into idolatry, and adored them as their gods. Wherefore Jeroboam sinned most gravely with the sin not only of idolatry but of scandal, because he was the cause why all Israel thereafter, until its destruction, worshipped these calves as idols and its gods for 256 years, in which nineteen kings following Jeroboam worshipped his calves.
31. AND HE MADE TEMPLES (shrines of calves and idols, not sacred but profane and sacrilegious) IN THE HIGH PLACES,—mountains and hills, on which idolaters were wont to set and adore their idols. And he made priests not of the tribe of Levi, as God had appointed, but out of any other he appointed the vilest of men priests of his calves and idols. So those who profane religion profane all else. But this became the vilest calves, that they should have the vilest priests. This was therefore a just judgment of God. So also the heretics of this age have appointed as ministers of their foolish heresy cobblers, shoemakers, apostates and the refuse of men. A lid worthy of such a dish.
Indeed Aristotle, from the mere light of nature and philosophy, book 7 of the Politics, chapter 9, prescribes that vile men should not be appointed priests, on account of the honour that is due to religion and the divine majesty.
See, then, one and the same spirit of the devil in both, who, because he is a despiser of holy things, reduces them all to vileness, that he may deride and set them forth to be derided by all, and that he may gradually lead them to atheism, so that they believe nothing, and deny the immortality of the soul, hell and all divinity, as in this age we see many heretics become atheists, as Cardinal Hosius wisely noted and observed.
Hear Tertullian, book On Prescription against Heretics, chapter 41: “Their ordinations are rash, light, inconstant, now they place neophytes, now men bound to the world, now our apostates, to bind them by glory since they cannot by truth. Nowhere is advancement easier than in the camp of rebels, where merely to be there is to be promoted. Therefore one is bishop today, another tomorrow: today a deacon, who tomorrow is a reader: today a priest, who tomorrow is a layman: for they enjoin priestly offices even on laymen.”
33. AND WENT UP TO THE ALTAR TO BURN INCENSE.—See here how Jeroboam from one sin of schism slides into a depth of crimes. For he arrogates to himself here not only the kingdom but also the pontificate, and makes himself pontiff and head of the Church. For as pontiff he burns incense, institutes feasts, consecrates priests, builds shrines. So Josephus. Wherefore of Jeroboam you may rightly apply that of Bishop Synesius, epistle 101 to Pylaemenes: “In no other way is it possible in the forum truly to grow rich, unless you confound all laws divine and human, and from a freeborn man become a trickster.”